Long knives, the story of how they won the West

Front matter

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Preface

In the main this story is the simple history of one of the most wonderful military achievements ever accomplished by the genius of a commander and the limitless endurance of his men.

The story is here told in the form of fiction, but there is really very little fiction in it, and that little deals only with matters of minor moment.

The main body of facts, together with George Rogers Clark’s speeches to the Creoles and the Indians, have been drawn from authentic and accepted historical writings, Clark’s addresses being exact copies from his own reports and from his Memoir.

The story of wonderful achievement with almost absurdly inadequate means, is so romantic and so dramatic in itself as to leave the novelist next to nothing to do but tell it.

But it happened that several of my own

PREFACE ancestors, and many of the ancestors of the people who were my neighbors in childhood, were soldiers under George Rogers Clark. As a consequence my early life had for its inspiration many stories of that marvellous campaign — stories transmitted from sire to son, and bearing with them, as the testimony of eye-witnesses, even more of historical authority than the official records do.

It is from these stories, related to my wondering ears, in early childhood, in front of great pioneer kitchen fire-places, that I have drawn those parts of the present story which the reader may perhaps regard as fiction in embellishment of history.

The Virginians who, under Clark conquered the West and made the glory and greatness of our country possible, were called by the Indians “Long Knives” or “Big Knives.” The Indian word meant either “long” or “big” as the translator might choose. President Roosevelt and some other writers use the form “Big Knives.” I have preferred to write “Long Knives,” partly because that was the term ii

PREFACE made familiar to me in my childhood by the fireside narrators of these wonder stories, who had heard the name from the lips of the Long Knives themselves, and partly because the hunting knives — of which I have examined many scores — were really not big in any dimension but length. It was not until Col. Bowie altered the “Long Knife” of the huntsmen into the “Bowie Knife,” for purposes of fight that it became “big.”

So much by way of explanation. Now to the story.

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Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Out of the Darkness ... 1

II. Quick on Trigger .... 17

II

H OSPITALITY was regarded as the supreme virtue, next to courage, in that wild western land. Every stranger who might present himself at any cabin door was held to be entitled to food and lodging, not as a matter of privilege, but as a matter of human right. The best that the pioneer had was freely offered to the stranger, quite as a matter of course. In a land in which there were no taverns every man going upon a journey must be in some degree dependent upon hospitality from day to day and from night to night, and so every man in his turn stood ready to extend hospitality to whatever stranger there might be at his gates.

In that spirit Tom Harrod promptly extended to this stranger the freedom of his 17 camp, asking him to share in the ash cake and the broiled slices of venison that were presently to constitute the boys’ evening meal.

But there was another side to wild western hospitality. The guest who was made free of bed and board was expected in answer to questions, to give an account of himself — to tell who he was and whence he came and whither he was going and why, — all this merely for the sake of friendly conversation. Accordingly, when Tom Harrod gave a signal, calling the other boys in to the camp, and when the juicy venison and the hot ash cake were nearly ready to be set out on bark platters laid upon the trunk of a fallen tree that served as a table, the three young Long Knives questioned their guest without a thought of impertinence or a suspicion of prying.

“I come from up on the Holston,” he answered, — “up in old Virginia, you know. You see Col. Clark, he’s done got leave o’ the governor to ’list some companies an’ bring ’em out here to defend Kaintucky 18 county. Most of his men he got up the state somewheres, an’ he took ’em to Pittsburg an’ brung ’em down the river to the Falls on flatboats. But us fellers what ’listed up in the Holston country was as dost to the F alls, or purty nigh it, as we was to Pittsburg; so Col. Clark ordered us to march acrost country to the Falls. Well, you see when we got there we began to suspicion like, that we’d been fooled.”

“Not by Col. Clark,” said Tom. “Any man who says that, lies and that’s all there is about it. I’ve known George Rogers Clark ever since I was knee high. He never cheated or deceived anybody in his life, and you shan’t say he did when I’m by to hear you say it.”

“Well, anyhow we heard it talked around that instid o’ bringin’ us out here to defend Kaintucky county he was a plannin’ to march us away off somewheres to fight British an’ Injuns an’ Frenchmen, an’ we seen mighty clear that he hadn’t half enough men to resk sich a thing as that. He hadn’t no more’n a hundred an’ twenty men, an’ 19 scarcely that, while they do say that if he was to go up into the Injun country anywheres the British could muster two or three thousand to say nothin’ of the Injuns. So us fellers, we just made up our minds not to go on no such fool expedition as that. We jest backed out, though I’m free to say I, for one, didn’t like backin’ out a bit. Anyhow, we jest quit three nights ago an’ started to go back to the Holston country. But we’re findin’ it a purty hard job, ’cause Col. Clark he sent his hoss soldiers out to ketch us an’ he tole ’em to kill every one of us. Then agin, all the people out here in Kaintucky county seems to be sot agin’ us. ’Taint only that they won’t give us nothin’ to eat, but a good many of ’em is a gunnin’ fer us in the woods, so’s we dassen’t even shoot game, ’case if they heared us shoot they’d be on to us, quick. That’s why I ain’t had nothin’ to eat for so long. I kin stan’ still in the woods an’ coax squirrels to come to me, an’ of course I mout have killed some that way, but I ain’t never yit betrayed a squirrel or a bird that come to me that 20 way an’ I ain’t agoin’ to begin now. I’ll starve to death first. I don’t know what I should ’a’ done ef I hadn’t found you fellers. Seems like they ain’t no way out’n this here thing. Every which way I try to go, they’s somebody a watchin’ to shoot me. I reckon the hoss soldiers has done ketched most of our fellers, and I reckon some o’ these Kaintucky people ’ll shoot me ’fore I’m done with it.”

“Drop that!” sharply commanded Tom Harrod, rising and bringing his rifle to his shoulder, just as his guest was about to begin upon his first strip of venison. “Drop that meat quick!” and the stranger obeyed. “You’re a deserter. You can’t have bite or sup with us. You may starve to death in the woods if you choose, or you may live on fish worms and snails and snakes, and maybe in that way you can make your way back to the Holston, but you can’t have any help from us.”

The boy’s angry determination was so obvious, and with his rifle at his shoulder, he was so intent upon enforcing it, that the 21 stranger instantly dropped the food he was just bringing to his hungry lips, and entered a protest.

“Well, it wa’n’t fair, you see,” he said. “Us fellers was ’listed on the Holston to defend Kaintucky, an’ when we got down there to Corn Island at the Falls, we found out, or suspicioned, that Clark intended to march us ’way over into the Illinois, to fight Englishmen and Frenchmen and Injuns. So we backed out, though, as I said before, I’d a ruther a stayed.”

“Yes, you turned cowards as soon as you found that George Rogers Clark meant to defend Kentucky in the only way in which it can be defended — that is to say, by conquering the Illinois and driving the British and their French and Indian allies out of that region.”

“But you see,” said the man, pleadingly, “he hain’t got men enough for to go on no sich a expedition with. He hain’t got no more’n a hundred an’ ten or twenty men, an’ a thousand would be too few fer sich a undertakin’.”

“Yes,” answered Tom Harrod, “and because he hasn’t men enough you and your cowardly comrades from the Holston have deserted him, leaving him with a still smaller force. Just at the time when you were most needed you quit like the white-livered creatures you are. Very well. You may find your way back to Holston, but if you do you’ll do it without any aid from us, and more than that, you’ll do it without any aid from your rifle or your powder horn or your bullet pouch or your long knife, for I’ll trouble you to lay them aside right now.”

Tom Harrod’s comrades, after the manner of the Kentuckians of that time, had quietly risen, seized their rifles and placed themselves at their leader’s side, ready to enforce his commands to the letter.

“Now choose!” commanded Tom. “George Rogers Clark needs men, and you are one of those who allowed him to pay your way out here with the money of the State of Virginia. He paid your way on condition that you should be one of his fighting men. Now I offer you a choice.

Either you’ll go back to him and fulfil your soldier’s contract or I shall strip you stark naked, and turn you loose in the woods without your rifle or your powder horn or your bullet pouch or your knife or anything else. Come! say it quick, which shall it be?”

The man cowered and quailed. He knew Tom Harrod’s sort, and he knew how certainly the boy would stand by the words he had spoken.

“I’ll go back to Clark,” he answered, “an’ I’ll serve out my term of ’listment. You see I didn’t want to back out as I tole you before. It’s the first time in my life that I ever did sich a thing, but all the other fellers said we’d been fooled and tricked, an’ they argified as how we must stand together for our rights, an’ so I had to do as the rest did, and then when we quit an’ started to march back Col. Clark he sent the hoss soldiers after us, an’ they killed most of us an’ scattered the rest, an’ everybody in Kaintucky turned agin us jest as you fellers has done, so we can’t git a mouthful o’ food.”

“That’s all right,” answered Tom Harrod. “We Long Knives of Kentucky haven’t any use for cowards and sneaks. You men from the Holston agreed to go as soldiers under Col. Clark. It wasn’t his business to tell you where he was going or what enemies he was going to fight. You enlisted to fight. You backed out the moment you learned that you were to do real soldiers’ work. You had expected to be housed in forts and stockades, and other safe places, and to live on the fat of the land. When you found out that George Rogers Clark had enlisted you as soldiers and meant to use you as soldiers in making real war, you deserted him and the cause for which he is fighting. I don’t believe all of you are cowards. I think some of you were simply misled and over persuaded. I don’t know to which class you belong, but you can decide that for yourself. I’m going to join Clark, as every Kentuckian is who can be spared from the direct defense of his own home. You can go with me, or you can set out for the Holston without a stitch of 2 5 clothing — as naked as you were when you were born.”

“I’ll go with you,” answered the man. “It wouldn’t be anything like puddin’ to go back to the Holston anyhow to be laughed at an’ called a coward for the rest of my born days. I’ll go back to Corn Island if you’ll do what you kin to git Col. Clark to fergit an’ fergive.”

“I’ll arrange all that” answered the boy confidently. “And now if you’ll stick to that you can have your supper.”

The man ate ravenously. He had been without food ever since he had left Corn Island three days before. He had been compelled to hide in the woods for the greater part of the time, not daring even to shoot game lest Clark’s cavalry or the angry Kentuckians should come upon him and execute Clark’s order to put every deserter to death. At such cabins as he had ventured to approach in search of that food which the pioneers under ordinary circumstances would have been glad to furnish gratuitously and lavishly to a stranger, he 26 had been turned away in anger as soon as he had made himself known as a deserter. The Long Knives, and their women folk as well, w r ere mercilessly resolute in their condemnation of cowards and deserters. Boundlessly hospitable as they were, they had neither victuals nor drink to give to the man who had deserted George Rogers Clark in the hour of his need. Every such man who asked for food at a Kentuckian’s cabin was warned to take himself off the premises quickly, upon pain of having a bullet sent through his body, or a pack of wolf hounds set upon him.

The poor fellow rested easily now that he had made his peace by agreeing to return to Clark’s camp, and in the meanwhile he was fully fed for the first time in many days. He was full of gratitude to Tom and his companions and he was eager to help them. He did help them in an important way. They were in a hurry to finish their salt making, take the product home to those who had employed them, and then be off to join George Rogers Clark — a thing which all 27 three of them had decided to do — or rather a thing they were going to do without any deciding about it.

Their last salt boiling was thickening in the kettles, and when supper was done Tom announced that it needed only drying.

“But that will take three days at least,” said Sim Crane, with melancholy in his voice.

“Yes, I suppose it will,” answered Tom.

“Not if you manage it right,” answered their guest, whose name, as they had learned, was Hawk Camden.

“Why, do you know anything about salt making?” asked Tom, eagerly.

“Yes. I worked a whole year at it down on the Kanawha. What do you dry your salt on?”

“On the canvas wagon cover spread out on the ground.”

“That’s what makes it take three days to dry,” answered the man. “Now let me show you.”

With that he took the wagon cover and swung it between trees, fastening its ropes 28 to limbs so that the canvas hung four feet or more from the ground.

“Now spread your salt on that, thin like — jest as thin as you kin, an’ you’ll find it as dry as a bone by noon to-morrow or not long arterwards. You see, when you spread the canvas on the ground the water in the salt soaks down into the canvas. Then you have a soppin’ wet canvas underneath the salt an’ there’s no chance fer it to dry ’ceptin’ from the top. But when it’s hung up this way the air gits a chance at the underside o’ the canvas an’ dries it so’s it kin take more an’ more of the wet from the salt. You see the air is the thirstiest thing they is in all nature an’, ef you give it a fa’r chance it’ll swaller rivers o’ water.”

As he talked the man spread the salt upon the canvas.

“It’s drippin’ wet,” he said, calling attention to the water droppings that were falling from the under side of the cloth, “but it’ll quit that purty soon, you’ll see, an’ then your salt will dry.”

At that moment there was a noise in the 29 bushes near at hand, and the boys, each seizing his rifle, retreated into the shadows to await developments.

The other boys lay still, waiting. But Tom Harrod never could be still for any length of time. He was possessed by a demon of restless energy, and impelled by it, he silently slipped away into the woods in search of the cause of their alarm. He had all the arts of the Indian at command, plus those of the pioneer huntsman. He knew how to move noiselessly through a thicket, even in the densest darkness of night, never by any accident treading upon a fallen twig that might make a noise in breaking, never letting a brush recoil from his hand with a swish, and never making a misstep however tangled the woodland might be. All of this had been bred in Tom Harrod from infancy until now it was a second nature to him.

Another thing. His ears were trained, not only to catch the slightest suggestion of a sound, but to locate it instantly and accurately — a thing far more difficult than 30 most persons understand. It is upon the lack of such training that the ventriloquist presumes when he deceives his auditors by what is mistakenly called “throwing his voice” in one or another direction.

Thus equipped, with every sense alert, Tom silently moved through the bushes until he came out upon the salt lick. There, not twenty feet away, he saw by the glow of the distant fire, a huge black bear, busily licking the soil for its savor of salt.

The bear in its turn was as alert in all its senses and as prompt in action as Tom Harrod himself was. Before Tom could bring his rifle to his shoulder the huge beast sprang forward and seized the muzzle of the gun in its jaws and its great muscular fore paws at one and the same moment. Tom instantly understood that within a fraction of another second the beast would twist the weapon so that it could not be fired at all. Feeling that life and death depended upon his own promptitude of action he touched the hair trigger, and the great black beast fell to earth with a bullet through his brain 31

* — a bullet that had been driven into the back of the mouth and thence out at the top of the skull.

Tom passed his hand hurriedly along the barrel of his piece and found to his very great satisfaction that the weapon was in nowise bent. The barrel of a Kentucky rifle in those days was a heavy and very stiff piece of metal, with a very small rifle bore in the centre of it. No ordinary force could mar it in the least, but Tom Harrod knew that a big black bear like the one he had encountered, had the strength of many bulls. He knew that if this beast had got a chance to wrench the gun, he would on the instant have made it as crooked and as worthless as a wild grape vine. And as the rifle was the backwoodsman’s best friend on earth Tom was rejoiced to discover by a single passage of his hand down the barrel that his quickness on trigger had saved his weapon from injury.

Hurrying to the back of the beast as he lay, and carefully keeping out of reach of any convulsive strokes the great claw tipped 32 forepaws might give, Tom finished his work by plunging his long hunting knife into the soft part of the animal’s chest and thence into his heart.

Ill

HURRIED WORK

N O sooner was Tom’s shot fired than the others of the little party, rifles in hand, rushed through the underbrush to join their comrade and render him any assistance he might need. The shot might mean the presence of Indians, or it might mean anything else. In any case they might be needed with their ever ready rifles, and after the helpful manner of the courageous men of that time, these youngsters hurried to Tom’s side, ready for whatever might await them there.

They found Tom hurriedly reloading his rifle. As soon as they saw what the occasion of the alarm and the shot had been, they set themselves to complete the work to be done. Securing grape-vines they swung the bear head downward to a limb, and set 34

HURRIED WORK to work to remove his skin and dress his great fat carcass.

In this task Hawk Camden, who had been a hunter all his life, helped them skilfully, and when it was done he ventured a suggestion.

“It’s June now,” he said, “an’ they’s a lot o’ flies about, an’ all that sort o’ thing. Why not smoke the b’ar so’s to git him home good an’ sound?”

“But we haven’t time,” objected Tom. “We shan’t stay here more than one more day and it takes weeks to smoke bear bacon.”

“That ain’t what I meant,” said Hawk. “I didn’t mean to make bacon but jest to keep the fresh meat sweet. Ef we salt the outside of it well an’ then give it a few hours of thick smoke, it’ll dry off like, an’ keep sweet, an’ best of all the flies can’t git at it, partic’lar ef they happens to be good sunlight to-morrow, as the stars promises now. Fer ef you leave fresh meat in a strong sunshine, it dries a sort o’ black crust all over it so’s that nothin’ kin git at it.”

As Hawk evidently knew the art of pre- 35 serving game in this way better than any of the Kentucky boys did, they let him direct the operation. Using an ax for cleaver, he cut the bear into large pieces. These the boys salted, rubbing the salt into all soft spots and all exposed places around the bone. Then the company built a rack of poles to which they hung the great pieces of meat, taking care that no two pieces should touch each other at any point. Next they built a little fire under the racks and spread a shelter of bushes over them in such fashion as to keep a dense smoke shut in around the meat. They were careful not to let the fire blaze up, but so to smother it as to make it yield the greatest possible volume of smoke.

They worked all night at this and at the stirring of the slowly drying last instalment of salt.

About ten o’clock the next morning, as the sun was shining fiercely, the boys tore down the smoke house shelter and hung the meat in the strongest sunlight and the fullest currents of air they could anywhere find. As Hawk Camden had predicted, a hard, 36

HURRIED WORK thin, black crust formed upon the meat, as hard, Tom said, as the bark of a hickory tree.

By two o’clock Tom had satisfied himself that the curing of the meat was a success and in the meanwhile he had fully formed his plans.

He helped his comrades load the wagon they had brought with them with the salt they had manufactured and with the deer and bear meat they had secured. Then, about four o’clock, he said to the elder of the two — a lad of fourteen or fifteen:

“I’m going to send you two fellows home with the wagon. You can manage that as well as I can. I am going straight to the Falls and to Corn Island to join George Rogers Clark. Hawk Camden will go with me. I can’t wait to go home with the wagon for fear Col. Clark may leave before I get to Corn Island. But you two must hurry home with the salt and deliver it. Then you are to get a pack horse or two — they’ll give you what you need when they know where you’re going — load the horses with all this 37 meat and all other provisions you can pick up, and come as quickly as you can to the Falls. Hawk and I will carry one hunk of the meat with us to live on. You know your way by the trail. Hawk and I will strike straight through the woods to the Falls.”

“But how will you find your way?” asked Ike Todd. “You haven’t any compass.”

“I’ll show you,” answered Tom, taking out his big bull’s-eye watch, and stepping to a spot where the sun was in full view.

“Now see,” he said, holding the watch level in his hand. “It is four o’clock and the hour hand of the watch points to IV. N ow when I point the hour hand, standing at IV, in the direction of the sun, that point on the dial which lies exactly half way between IV and XII is due south. That point is II, so that I know that south lies in the direction of the figures II. Now if you know where south is you can easily find any other point of the compass. With II for south, I know that north is in the direction of VIII, west in the direction of XI, east in the direction of V.”

HURRIED WORK

“But how if your hour hand is on the other half of the dial?” asked Sim. “Say at VIII? Which way do you count for half way toward twelve?”

“Why the shortest way, of course. If the hour hand stood at VIII, south would be in the direction of X. You know, of course, that at noon the sun is in the south. Before noon it is east of south — after noon it is west of south. The only question in every case is how much east or how much west. The thing is perfectly simple. No matter what time it is, point your hour hand toward the sun and south will be just half way between that and twelve. Remember that. It may come in handy some time.”

“It might if I owned a watch,” said Sim Crane, laughing.

“Maybe you will some day,” answered Tom Harrod.

“Where did you learn that trick, Tom?” asked Ike.

“George Rogers Clark taught me how to do it when I was out with him surveying a year or two ago. But now we must be off.

We can’t afford to lose what’s left of the afternoon. You’d better keep going till nearly dark. The daylight will last till about eight o’clock. Good bye, we’ll meet you at Corn Island unless Col. Clark moves before you get there. If so find out which way he went and follow us in a skiff.”

IV The Leader Of The Long Knives

A YEAR before the boys thus hurried away from the salt lick George Rogers Clark, then a young man of twenty-five, had conceived the plan of one of the great decisive, empire-building, history-making campaigns of the world. He had since then toiled for a year to get ready for the execution of his plan, and he was not yet ready in any proper sense of the word. That is to say, he had no adequate force with which to make his campaign and he could get no adequate force.

But George Rogers Clark in his own person and by virtue of his genius, his enterprise, his limitless self-confidence, and his gift of controlling men, counted for more than a regiment or a brigade might have done under a less forceful command than 41 his own, and so, with the very meagre force at hand, he had resolved to go forward.

Clark was a young Virginian whose education had been fairly good and in addition he had learned a good deal of mathematics and was a good practical land surveyor, just as George Washington had been before he became a great commander. Clark had gone to Kentucky as a boy, and while yet scarcely more than a boy he had become influential there in an extraordinary degree.

He was a man of genius and a born statesman as well as a born military leader. It was he who had discovered the need of organization, cooperation and orderly government among the widely scattered settlers in the Kentucky country. It was he who had journeyed on foot and at great risk to Virginia and induced the authorities there to erect Kentucky into a county with a court empowered at once to administer justice and to regulate public affairs by the exercise of legislative and executive authority.

Then later, when the Revolutionary war came on, and Hamilton’s infamous opera- 42 tions threatened to make a hostile British possession out of all the region that we now know as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan — thus forever shutting the Americans in and forbidding to the Republic all possibility of expansion westward — it was George Rogers Clark alone who clearly understood what this meant. He saw how certainly, when the Revolutionary war should be ended, the British power, securely holding the region north of the Ohio, would proceed to conquer the Kentucky and Tennessee settlements south of the river, and make of the Allegheny mountains a Chinese wall standing in the way of American national growth. Further than that, he foresaw that with the region west of the mountains in their control and in easy communication with Canada, the British might bide their time and consult their convenience, but in the end descend upon the Americans from the rear with iresistible forces and reconquer the young and feeble states to arbitrary British control.